Friday, October 2, 2015

So, Jason Lee is kind of a regular at my store. He's come in several times, and it's not uncommon for somebody to approach him like they were old friends, just because he's a well known actor.

Well, I just feel like I gotta say it, but I ain't that person. When Jason Lee comes to my register when I'm working, I treat him like a normal dude, like as if he wasn't famous or anything. Sometimes all I say is, "How's it going. That be all for you?" And other times, I'll turn on the natural charm, just like I would with any ordinary slob who comes into the store who isn't Jason Lee, and I'll say something like, "Yeah, that's my favorite Gatorade flavor too," or "Cool hat bro."

My point is, I think that as long as I keep treating Jason Lee like a normal person, and not some kind of meta Ultron humanoid who is too good to be true when he comes to my register to buy Gatorade, that maybe possibly someday he'll want to be my buddy.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

We all know the... word(s)? The expression? Meanwhile. It's two words scrunched up close together to make a new word.

Kinda like meantime, except that a meantime - as in 'the meantime' - is more like a 'something' that you can be inside of and experience directly and personally. A meanwhile, on the other hand, feels more like an outside observation of a meantime.

I've come to realize lately that the meantimes of my life that I feel compelled to share might not be easily given away... in that they're easy to give, but maybe not so easy to. receive. They're abstract. Maybe they're too mine and not enough yours, and therefore can't be yours, or anyone else's. That makes me a little sad, if that's the case.

But what the fuck do I know? I'm making all this shit up as I go along.

Anyway.

I've always assumed that the feelings that spring out of all of these moments I feel will naturally wind up seeping into the soil of future hours, taking root there and spreading the information of my experiences into and throughout a more or less timeless condition, conducive to a specific type of existence called being human.

I'm not so sure about that now, and that makes me nervous, and anxious, and unsure... and it hurts, too.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Do you ever stop to think about what's going on in all of the life around you? Just the plant life is enough to consider for now, so... say for instance, you're walking along and you're surrounded by mostly plant life, which isn't unusual. What that means to the average person is that it's there, it's motionless, and it's green, and it's reliable.

Think about it though... in all of that green life, there are complex things going on all the time in every cell of every motionless blade of grass and every different kind of leaf, at every second, and during every piece of a piece of a second.

There's motion going on down inside those cells that you can't see. Lots of hectic motion. The green machine of life doing what it does with chemical reactions, moving molecules around very quickly, using the energy from the sun and from the nutrients in the dirt to push around specific electrons to different atoms... choosing the ones that work, rejecting the ones that don't, sliding rapidly spinning RNA molecules up and down chains of DNA, unzipping and combining them, making copies, editing, repairing, constantly fighting against the unmaker, and all according to an immaculate and permanently ordered set of physical laws which spend electrical charges like pennies against the landlord of entropy, so that this invisible machine may persist constantly and in fantastic, amazing motion, completely dedicated to the singular purpose of delivering that impetus which is sustains the momentum of life.

How would we be different if we were aware of all of this, all of the time, just naturally? The same way that we are aware of the sky being blue? As something that's taken as a given, as common sense... the invisible blur of life at the atomic level which is always happening, like a jet engine that never ever stops, constantly spinning, always moving? As if we were perpetually embedded in the basic nuts and bolts of the alive parts of the universe, one second at a time, and also aware of it? Would it be wonderful?
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Sunday, September 27, 2015

I watched Coraline yesterday on my day off. Something I noticed as I was reviewing it after - I do that with animated films to find easter eggs - and there was one, right off the bat. There was graffiti on the back of the moving truck that said, 'stopmo rulz'. You know. Stop-motion animation. I got such a kick out of that, I forgot to review any more of it.

So Anywho. That little girl, Coraline... she's just a straight up little shit, ain't she? Why is she so mean to Wybie? Calling him 'Why Were You Born', just a minute and a half after meeting him, is just flat out abusive. Even after evil mom 'fixes' Wybie so that he can't talk, Coraline is just all down with that. "So, he can't talk? I like it!" she says. And it's not like she's just blissfully unaware that something dastardly has been done to Wybie. How would she have liked to have had her larynx magically unexisted from her throat, or worse? She even asked him if it hurt! That's exactly the same thing as being aware of empathy, but willfully choosing to ignore it! Evil! Just as bad as the mother, or worse!

And she didn't show any sign of giving a diddly squat when Other Dad sacrificed his life to stop the evil robot mantis from forcibly manipulating his appendages into chopping her to bits, saving not only her life, but the soul of one of the ghost kids. What a heroic act! But Coraline doesn't give an old dusty fart.

At least she gets better a little later, when she unties the fake smile from Wybie's face, and I guess Coraline saved the day at the end, and was even almost nice to Wybie, except that she still punched him hard enough to hurt. I guess it was too much to just be nice, without any kind of qualifier.

Oh, and one more thing. That was just truly, fundamentally, elementally, unforgivably stupid to throw the unhanded needle fingers of that disembodied needle hand, STILL CLUTCHING THE KEY for Pete's sake, down into the well. It shouldn't take a mentat to be able to anticipate possible future events based on past events of a similar nature. That is, if a disembodied needle hand can come back to life, then maybe, MAYBE some unhanded needle fingers might be able to do the same thing? YOU THINK?!

Maybe I'm being too hard on Coraline. She's just a kid, after all. Maybe when she grows up she won't be so mean and stupid.

I watched this with Leah when it came out back in '09, and I don't remember any of that. However, I do remember that Leah used to have this short lived obsession with posting pictures of herself on Facebook with buttons for eyes. I didn't really like that... it kind of freaked me out.

I was at the old homestead in Omaha where I grew up. There was an army at the back of the house, occupying the old back bedroom that used to be a porch. I was in the living room.at the front. I snuck through the kitchen and saw them preparing their heavy weapons. "Hey, I thought we had a treaty. No heavy weapons." The leader of the back room army just kind of smirked and continued polishing some bomb casings. "Fine.heavy weapons. I have nukes. I'll just use nukes."

That got to him, and they abandoned the heavier stuff and they started firing crossbows at me as I ran back through the kitchen to the front room. I turned as I was running and pulled a pistol, and fired at the leader.

I had a bullets eye view in extreme slow motion. It took about 30 seconds for the bullet to reach the enemy. Right before it went into his eye, the viewpoint changed. It shifted out a little to the side, and I could see the bullet slowly, ever slow slowly, penetrate his eyeball. It made a very slight dent at first, but then the surface tension of the eyeball gave and the bullet just slid in through a hole that formed a perfect seal around the bullet as it penetrated, until the length of the bullet had passed all the way into the eye, and there was just a neat hole that sloped inward. The view followed the path of the bullet through the face, tracking it as it went through the head, and as this was happening, wherever the bullet passed, blood would be forced out through little irregularities in the skin... a dimple, or a mole near the ear, and when the bullet passed the ear, blood came out of the ear, gushing out, but oh so slowly. The bullet finally exited the back of the head in a dramatic and extremely messy fashion.

Distraction from Imminent Despair

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Zounds cried the astounded clown in a gown who was bound for down town as he frowned at the resounding sound of the renowned crown that he'd found as it wound up on a round mound surrounded by abounding brown ground near his half drowned hound from around the pound. Meh.